


The Flower Girl on the Corner

by LolMouse



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Character Death, F/F, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:00:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28917231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LolMouse/pseuds/LolMouse
Summary: She was a fixture of the market, always at the corner where stalls ended and mundane life began, the flower girl on the corner.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	The Flower Girl on the Corner

She was a fixture of the market, always at the corner where stalls ended and mundane life began, the flower girl on the corner. She would greet shoppers and sightseers with a smile and offer them her flowers.

Her specialty was armbands, crowns and necklaces made of fresh rose petals. No one knew where she got them in such ready supply: For a whole winter, she always had fresh petals every day, peddling them in her overly large red coat. 

Her story changed with every customer: one day she’d be selling them to support her mother, then her grandmother, then her sister or brother or child, then some cause no one had heard of. Everyone in the market knew her, but no one did. And at the end of each day, she would ask children to gather around and give whatever petals remained and give them whatever she had not sold. A fresh supply was always ready the morning after.

She took frequent breaks, going who knew where. Sometimes, she would return with fresh wares. No one questioned it, because who would? She was the flower girl, and everyone knew her.

It was during the spring when she began selling whole flowers. Bright red roses, beautiful and fragrant, as if they had been cut mere minutes before. They stayed fresh longer than anything from the florists’ stall down the street, and the proprietor did not mind. Indeed, he had bought one for himself, and cried for an hour at its perfect beauty, needing consolation from the next stall’s antique seller before he could reopen for business. But curiously, her roses always had short stems, or none at all. She would weave them cleverly onto her strings of petals, or clip them into your hair. If asked why she cut them short, she would give no straight answer. Her breaks became more frequent, sometimes remarked upon, and a few voiced their concern about her health as she grew thinner.

Around fall, when the drinks and ice cream peddlers were closing up as the oncoming cold stole their business, she sold her first full stemmed rose. It was a remarkable specimen, so much so that an impromptu auction was formed for it: it sold for more than she normally made in a day. They became sought after by lovers, particularly those looking to marry: sometimes, a flower replaced a ring entirely in a proposal, and no one heard of a refusal if the flower girl’s roses were employed. They kept their freshness and fragrance remarkably well. But if she benefited from this influx of attention, her health did not show it.

For the first week of snow, she did not come at all. It felt like the market had lost a bit of its life and warmth and color. When she did show up, it was with an entire bouquet, looking as if her own blood had been drained to create it, and she did not show her face for another week after the bidding frenzy that had ensued. Her visits became more sporadic, but her wares ever more sought after for it: eventually, she would show up only long enough to sell what she carried, and then leave again.

In the snows of early November, she was found lying on her corner in her overlarge red coat, a basket of flowers fallen near her. The snow by her mouth was stained red, in blood and red petals, her eyes staring at nothing, her mouth forever frozen into a tiny smile. 

The news spread quickly, the mystery deepening. Had some jealous suitor murdered her after a rose had failed them? Had she slipped? When the authorities questioned everyone on the market street, everyone realized that no one knew that much about her. A few knew her as Alice: a few others as Mary: Yet others as Flora. No one knew where she had lived.

The next sunday, the florist called all those who would come to a meeting after closing hours, claiming he had some answers. Her apartment had been found, a dilapidated thing in a poor section of town, reported only when she had failed to return for two days and the landlady had investigated.

In the room, he claimed, there had been blood-stained sheets and pillows, as if from illness, crusted with dried flower petals. There was a single picture by a nightstand, the frame worn as if it had been held for hours at a time, of a girl no one recognized. Diaries had been found, most days marked with the income from the day, but the only topic was an unnamed woman, likely the one from the picture. It described months of anguished yearning for her from afar. They had known each other: there were times they interacted. But without a name, there was nothing further to investigate.

What was more curious was her cause of death. It was illness, that mysterious thing that had afflicted her for so long, but the nature of it shocked everyone present. Flowers had grown inside her, lining her lungs and stomach, covering her heart. The source of her wares was obvious: She had been vomiting and coughing them up every night. It was a rare affliction, manifesting from unrequited love, cured only by a return of affection, or from expensive surgery. Surgery which she had not been able to afford.

So she had taken to selling the manifestations of her love, to make ends meet, to survive, and perhaps to seek her cure. Though whether she wanted one was not clear: Sometimes she wanted it, but other times in her diaries she indicated she would rather die. And in the end, hidden under her bed, was enough money to perform the operation: her final sales had more than covered it. But she had chosen to return to the market.

Everyone knew her story, but no one knew her.

Bouquets were laid where she had died for the rest of that winter, and flowers of all kinds for the following year. But as time passed, Times were hard, business closed, lovers frequented less, children not at all. Merchants came and went, and the reason to keep flowers there was slowly forgotten. 

But every year for many years to come, to those who kept watch, a mysterious woman, a ring on her finger, would come to the corner each November and place a bouquet of roses on the same spot.


End file.
